One of the year’s most spectacular meteor showers will be visible on Saturday night, if weather conditions are clear.

At their height, the Geminids could produce between 50 and 100 shooting stars every minute. They might be glowing in multiple colours and include occasional rapid bursts of two or three.

The best time to see the meteors will be at around 2am when the “radiant” – the point in the sky from which the meteors appear to originate – is almost overhead, next to the constellation Gemini.

But meteors should be visible throughout the night from around 10pm, and are best watched well away from built-up areas.

The brilliant streaks of light can flash almost anywhere across the sky but for this particular shower it is a good idea to look south from the northern hemisphere, and north from the southern hemisphere.

A meteor shower is produced when Earth ploughs through a dust cloud in space. The individual dust particles burn up to form the brilliant shooting stars visible from the ground.

These dust clouds are not permanent features. They are the debris of disintegrating comets or colliding asteroids. New showers can appear and old ones can become depleted and go into extinction.

The Geminids first appeared in the night sky in the 1860s. Initially they were a poor shower, but throughout the 20th century the number of meteors associated with them rose consistently.

Now they are one of the strongest, most reliable showers to strike the Earth. Astronomers hold them on a par with the Perseids, which light the sky in August.

The Geminid dust cloud has been traced to an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon. It was only discovered in October 1983 and swiftly became associated with the shower because it shared an almost identical orbit.